Yes, woe, it is me with more questions than you can shake the perverbial stick at. so to speak. Computer CPU in my "big daddy" is finally faltering and I am questioning which system to purchase that will give me some speed in post processing. I have learned there are dual cores, triple cores, quad cores, and a virtual plethera of options, so I am looking for advice here.

_________________Sony Alpha 700, Minolta 70-210 f/4 and some other stuff

Macs are the computers of choice for most photographers but you can't go wrong with a decent PC.

Get a decent CPU and plenty of RAM, 4GB would be nice. I'd avoid triple cores because only AMD makes them and AMD's aren't the best at the moment. More and more apps are being optimised for multiple processors so there isn't much reason to avoid quad-core anymore.

PS CS4 supports hardware graphics acceleration so getting a decent graphics card may boost PS performance by a fair amount. I'd wait for the benchmarks to come out first though.

The subject is a little misleading, as operating system refers to... the erm... operating system? Which for most people will mean either Windows or Mac OS. Which you choose will be mainly down to personal choice.

The question seems bigger overall and we're looking at computer systems in general. As always you can spend as much as you like on more of everything, but without any other information of intended uses or budgets it's more guesswork. I'd suggest any Intel quad core paired with at least 2 GB ram, preferably more although above 4 GB is probably excessive unless you know you're going to make use of it.

I recomend the Thermaltake Armor Full Tower - I have it - Fit it with 1 DVD RW and get 2 more bay coolers, so you have 3 x 120 fans at the front meaning you can fit 12 hard drives if need be (9 at the front, 3 at the top rear of the case)

The Q6600 is an amazing cpu for overclocking. It can reach 3.2GHz without breaking a sweat. I've got one up to 3.8Ghz on air under 60 degrees C (a good idea to try and keep your cpu under that)

Good motherboard allows stability and good overclocking, not to mention plenty of little bits and peices like built in wifi, eSata, dual Ethernet, TV tuners, 7.1 Surround sound and sometimes HDMI and optical audio out.

4Gb ram - Photos need ram. RAW photos need lots of ram when editing. Lightroom on my PC sucks over 1.4GB when I use it, and I'm sure it would munch more if I had any more ram to supply it with (msn, media player, a million firefox windows take up the other 600mb)

Lightroom is already graphics card accellerated to a certain extent I think, and the next version even more so (if it is already) with CS4 offering it.

I've been considering a Dell Inspiron with Pentium dual core, with 4 GB DDR2, and 320G HD. Do you guys think this would be enough to operate a photo editing program? I have never shot in RAW, but on my previous computer, PSP would sometimes close due to internal error, and lose all the changes I had made on a photo.

I have to be conservative in my spending here. Nothing over $1000.00.

_________________Sony Alpha 700, Minolta 70-210 f/4 and some other stuff

you can build a machine yourself for under 1000 that would be really nice. in face my dream machine would be about 1400(ish). when in fact i bought mine through dell last November for 2000 (nice big 22" included though )

anywho, thats a wonderful machine. only downside to a dell is you cannot overclock it. so what the dell gives you, you get.

Linux and unix I keep hearing are pretty much immune to viruses and malware. Mac too. Never heard this before. People have been running big programs like PS on single core processors for years, so why now is the big push for dual core and quad, and video cards, and a whole bag of tricks that they say you must have to edit photos?

_________________Sony Alpha 700, Minolta 70-210 f/4 and some other stuff

Linux and unix I keep hearing are pretty much immune to viruses and malware. Mac too. Never heard this before. People have been running big programs like PS on single core processors for years, so why now is the big push for dual core and quad, and video cards, and a whole bag of tricks that they say you must have to edit photos?

In the old days computers got faster by having higher clocks. The laws of physics got in the way, and they can't easily do that any more. Clock speeds haven't got faster for a while. Instead they're putting more cores in to get more processing power.

Why more power now? Software is capable of doing ever more functions involving more complex calculations. If you just do the old basics, then arguably you don't need much power other than to handle the trend for ever bigger files due to more pixels in the sensor.

Well, as my posts clearly indicate...I know nothing about computers. I do, however, understand the frustration one experiences when their processor goes South and they have to try to get information as to what to buy on a budget. (There go those primes...) Therefore, am very grateful for the information you all have given me. Next question, would you stay with dual core, or bite the bullet and step up to quad?

Dell asked me if I would be needing an external HD..had no clue what they were talking about. Is this the same thing as a slave?

Honestly my single core with the 2G memory, and 300G hard drive did not give me any problems, other than being slow when working on editing photos.

_________________Sony Alpha 700, Minolta 70-210 f/4 and some other stuff

I know how to plug everything in and all that, been doing that for about 10
years, and a family member works for Microsoft, but they are far too busy to deal with my little issues. so I just sort of read and ask questions, and make uniformed comments..LOL I would not be upgrading if my computer worked at ALL. This one is an older HP that belongs to my husband, state of the art when it was purchased, but now. virtually useless it's so slow. but never have had a moments problem with it, and mine was "sick" 3 times this year. Crashed, and erased the partition 3 times. in the shop a lot and this time they diagnosed it as cpu problem, so I have to replace it. It really hacks me off, as I was really looking forward to some new photography equipment. But. perhaps a blessing disguised as a curse. Because I was lazy, I lost the wedding pictures I just shot, but not before printing 30 8x10's and about 65 4x6's. So that external HD sounds wonderful.

_________________Sony Alpha 700, Minolta 70-210 f/4 and some other stuff